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Obamacare Sign Up Deadline Delayed for the Holidays

In order to get young people to buy the Obamcare Exchange health insurance plans, the Obama Administration dictated to insurance companies a new deadline of December 24, Christmas Eve, for policies to be effective January 1. At the same time, over the weekend the President went through a botched PR rollout of his own, enrolling in the DC Exchange. These games will continue, and probably become worse, once the law is in full effect next week.

The Obama Administration and other Obamacare backers have been trying for a long time to get young people to sign up for exchange-based insurance. The latest social media push urged supporters to talk to relatives at holiday gatherings.

Never mind, for a second, how uncomfortable that would be -- having cousin Chad show up as the Instant Expert on Obamacare to lay down the White House talking points. Consider when people actually get together for the holidays: it's usually only Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Sure there are extended visits, but the mother lode of extended family interaction is on those two days.

The White House finally figured out that after all of the hype pushing people to talk to their families, they'd be past their already extended deadline by the time most people gathered to enjoy each other's company. Awkward! It would be far better to extend that deadline into the prime holiday time.

At the last minute, they even went to the trouble of enrolling President Obama in the DC exchange, even though as Commander-in-Chief he and his family have a health care staff at beck and call.

“Like some Americans, the complicated nature of the president’s case required an in-person sign-up,” the official said. “As you’d expect, the president’s personal information is not readily available in the variety of government databases HealthCare.gov uses to verify identities.”

The only way the President's staff would know that his enrollment wouldn't work is if someone tried it.

The President or his staff must have attempted to sign the President up for the Obamacare exchange and found that they couldn't do it. Just as for many other Americans who face the mandate tax, the President couldn't sign up on healthcare.gov, either.

But it's good to be king; you can sign up in person. Normal people who sign up "in person" are simply walked through the web site or paper signup. Where did this particular "in-person sign-up" take place? It can't be in just some random Navigator's office, since even they just use the web site. Ace guesses White House staff went to Health and Human Services IT offices and had them do it:

And they mean that he didn't use the website, though that's supposedly "fixed" and he's telling everyone else to use it. "Signed up in person" means he utilized top HHS IT officials, entering data directly into the system, to execute this symbolic gesture.

And why is the President's information not available to healthcare.gov? Surely the security at that site is sufficient to prevent disclosure, isn't it?

So while the President waits past the deadline to enroll, extends the deadline again and again, and finally cuts through the bureaucracy in a way ordinary people could not, to sign up for insurance he isn't even going to use, insurance companies have got to be wondering what life will be like once they rely on Obamacare for their income. I'd be worried if I were in their position.

Does the Tea Party actually have anything on their agenda other than trying to constantly come up with useless diatribes against a piece of legislation they failed to stop? Its time to move on. Might I suggest undertaking a cause that actually does some good to society? That's a good start...

The IRS has been the nation’s tax officer for more than a century, and tax collecting is what it has always done, until now. The IRS is being placed in charge of enforcing ObamaCare, the President’s signature legislative accomplishment. Now that the American people have had a chance to read the law, a majority still oppose it, and a near-majority would support defunding it. Another thing the American people have recently discovered is that the IRS has been systematically discriminating against Conservative and Tea Party non-profits. The IRS is an agency out of control.

The federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services claim that consumers saved $3.9 billion because of restriction on insurance companies under Obamacare. The figure is almost meaningless. Also, they don't mention that Obamacare is raising insurance premiums, not lowering them.

Personal Freedom and Prosperity 110: The Rule of LawA government with moral and legal authority promulgates written rules and universally, impartially and uniformly enforces those rules providing a predictable and stable legal order on which to base economic and personal decisions. The law prevails, not the proclamation or arbitrary decision of a ruler, government bureaucrat, the enforcer (e.g., policeman) or judge.

Whenever President Obama is in a bind, he turns to his celebrity supporters. They prop him up when he’s wavering and help remind everyone how “cool” he is and that he's part of their team. With Obamacare implementation due to begin this fall, our government is bringing in the National Football League and its stars to bolster enrollment in the unpopular program.

The coalition of hospital lobbyists, insurance companies, and political operatives who pushed through Medicaid expansion under Obamacare in Arizona have a repeal fight on their hands.Over 300 grassroots activists came together on Saturday in Phoenix to kick off a petition drive to put repeal of Governor Brewer's Medicaid expansion plan on the ballot. If successful, the drive will showcase the power that comes when principled conservatives organize inside a political party.

Democracy and Power 115: Other Power PlayersThe essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse. —James Madison, Speech in the Virginia State Convention of 1829-1830

Arizona Governor Jan Brewer earned much conservative praise for her colorful duels with President Obama. So Republicans from coast to coast were stunned to find her transformed into a passionate Obamacare booster.

On today’s edition of the FreedomCast, Lachlan Markay, reporter for the Washington Free Beacon joins me to discuss OFA’s big dollar push for Obamacare, the Obama dministration’s efforts to blackmail insurance companies, and how our family’s food bill would increase a whopping $200 a month if we were on the SNAP food stamp program.
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On today’s edition of the FreedomCast, Representative Tom Price of Georgia joins me to discuss the latest congressional investigation into the IRS scandal, the effort to stop the IRS from enforcing Obamacare and how you can help.
Have a suggestion for an upcoming FreedomCast episode, or a comment?